dcaufandomcom-20200222-history
Legends of the Dark Knight
"Legends of the Dark Knight" is the nineteenth episode of . A fan favorite episode, it delves into the legacy of the Dark Knight. Plot Act I It's late in Gotham City. Three kids read the Gotham Gazette's latest report on a mysterious arsonist. When Matt, one of them, thinks he can make out Batman on a photograph, Carrie needs to double-check it before she believes it. But, she assures her friends, the "arson boy" is history once Batman is on the case. Enthusiastically, the third kid, Nick, begins to tell his friends of how he perceives the Batman. :He is like a giant pterodactyl beast, with big fangs and talons. And when he sees a bad guy, he swoops down from the sky and carries him off. Skree, Skree! Carrie is less than impressed and drags Nick back into reality. Matt then tells that his uncle actually knows Batman - and that he's really nice and funny. Carrie dismisses this version as well, but allows Matt to explain himself. :Matt's uncle, a guard at the Walker Music Center, sits back on what seems a quiet night, until his radio signal is cut short and replaced with maniacal laughter. Joker boasts of his plans of thievery, and exclaims: "The comedy is dead!". Frightened, the guard says he's "better stay on his toes". Nick cuts short Matt's story, deriding the humorous statement "to stay on my toes". Matt dismisses it as the way his uncle tells the story, and continues with his story. :The guard checks all locks and doors in the music center, when a jack-in-the-box is thrown in through a window. A joker face pops out, and gasses the guard. Desperate for fresh air, he unlocks a door - upon which the Joker and two henchmen enter. The Joker heads straight for ukulele's, pings a note, and expects his henchmen to applaud. He then walks to the guard and steals his keys, joking that strings never were his section, and he was much better on the keys. :But instead of unlocking a display case with a key, he just smashes it with a priceless ukulele. As he is about to pick up the valuable manuscript in the case, a shadow looms over him. Batman and Robin enter, and explain how they figured out his clue, "The comedy is dead". It's a line from the famous opera "Pagliacci", and Joker was about to steal the original score. Joker orders his goons to fire at the Dynamic Duo, and Batman and Robin take them on. Running from the fight, Joker climbs up a ladder to throw a sousaphone around Robin. As Batman sees his young friend in need, he is distracted. A henchman hits him on the head with a giant tuning fork. Joker is very pleased, and orders his men to tie them up. Act II :The guard wakes up to see that the Joker forces Batman and Robin on the snares of a giant piano. The Clown Prince of crime gloats about how long he's been wanting to kill the Batman, and walk down the keys of the piano. As Batman sees the hammers closing in, he tells Robin to roll. While outrolling the hammers, Batman whips a saw out of his belt and cuts the cords. At that moment, however, a hammer falls down on them. :Joker sees victory, and laughs at his luck. At that moment, however, his two henchmen are struck out by batarangs, and Batman and Robin are shown to have survived. They crush the Joker under the keyboard lid, and go after the goons. Batman and Robin find a way to stop them: by using a giant violin and its bow as a bow and arrow. The goons are pinned to the wall right next to the guard. :The Joker gets a way, but Batman gives chase. He jumps on a large saxophone that's on a wheeled tray, and closes in on the Joker. He traps him in the horn of the sax, and at that moment he blows it. The Joker's deafened by the loud sound. When the sax crashes into a "humongous flute", Joker is catapulted into a harp, and is trapped in the snares. Batman then tells the guard to call the police, and shakes Robin's hand. He concludes: "Well done old chum." Nick and Carrie are struck by disbelief, and dismiss the story because Matt's uncle was unconscious for most of the adventure. Matt still defends it, but the others have moved on. The walk past a thrift store, where another kid, Joel overhears them. He's excited about the Caped Crusader - all the muscles and the tight rubber armor, and a car that he thinks can drive up walls. Nick laughs at the thought. Matt then sees that one of their hangouts, The Kozy Korner, is burned down. Joel informs him that the mysterious arsonist is to blame. Carrie and Nick rush in to look for clues, with Matt reluctantly following. He suggests they'd leave, but Carrie counters that Batman wouldn't leave either. Nick asks her how she knows - which leads he to tell her tale. :A girl Robin hides behind a corner, eyeing the mutants on the other side. One of them captures her, and the other asks her where the Bat is. Right at that moment, two large arms grab him and pull him through a wall. The other one pulls a gun on Robin, and threatens to kill her. Before he can do anything, Batman descends from the ceiling directly above the mutant, crushing him to a lower floor. There, he violently interrogates the frightened mutant into revealing his leader's whereabouts. :At a dump, the leader preaches the fate of the mutants to his gang. He dismisses the opinion of the general population - that they're just noisy kids - and exclaims that they are the future and the law. The crowd goes wild, and two of them, Rob and Don, praise their leader. The leader tells them he himself will kill the leader, but at that moment, the torch he holds explodes. From the distance, an ominous rumble rises from a cloud of dust. The mutants fire their weapons at the tank that inches closer, but their bullets fail to cause damage. Batman returns fire with rubber bullets, which prove much more effective as he takes out the majority of the mutants. Robin leaves the tank and continues to fight the mutants on her own, armed with a slingshot. :The Mutant Leader steps in front of the tank and calls out Batman. The two fight, and after a couple of blows end up in a pit of mud. The Mutant Leader gains the upper hand and attempts to drown Batman... Act III Continuity Background Information Production notes * One shot, that was used in "Beware the Creeper" when Jack Ryder's cigar blew up the tank of acid, is used at several points in the episode. It's first used when the Mutant Leader's torch is blown up, then as Robin destroys a grenade launcher, when Batman punches the Mutant Leader and finally when Batman throws an explosive batarang to provide the children with an escape route. Trivia * This episodes is sprawling with nods and homages to various incarnations of Batman's history: ** The concept of the story is dervied from ''Batman'' #250 (cover date July 1973) by Frank Robbins and Dick Giordano. Three city kids are taken on a camping trip by Bruce Wayne and relate their personal experiences with the Caped Crusader. A similar, but more true to the original, adaptation of this story was "Have I Got a Story for You", the first chapter of Batman: Gotham Knight. ** The first story comes from that issue; though the concept of Batman being presumed a metahuman is also touched upon in post Zero-Hour retellings of Superman's first contact with Batman. ** The second story is drawn by James Tucker in the style of Dick Sprang (though not based on any particular story itself). The use of bright colors, expositional speech and large props come straight from the Golden Age of comic books in the 1940's and 50's. ** At the end of the second story, Batman and Robin shake hands and Batman refers to Robin as "old chum", which are both references to the 1966 television series starring Adam West and Burt Ward. The handshake was part of the animated title sequence. ** Between the second and third story, the kids meet Joel, who stands in front of a store called "Shoemaker". He thinks of a Batman with "tight rubber armor" and a Batmobile that can "drive up walls". The boy and his opinion on Batman are not-so-subtle nod to Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin, a movie criticized for its homosexual overtones. ** The third story is an all-out adaptation of Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, storyboarded by Darwyn Cooke. The first part is lifted verbatim from a robbery Batman stopped (though the old lady is replaced by Robin), whereas the second part is a word-for-word retelling of the finale of the miniseries. * Both Dick Sprang and Frank Miller were given a tape before the episode was aired. Both liked the handling of their work. * Joker's plot in the second story is to steal the original score of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, a 1892 opera that often shows up in Batman media. Penguin and Veronica Vreeland attended the opera in "Birds of a Feather". * The boy Matt is voiced by Ryan O'Donohue, who would later voice another boy named Matt - Matt McGinnis - in . * Kevin Michael Richardson was a fan of The Dark Knight Returns, an was very excited about playing the Mutant Leader. Cast Quotes Category:Comedic episodes Category:The New Batman Adventures episodes